La Casita del Mago — Restaurant in Huaraz

Rarely in my life do I ever leave bad reviews for restaurants. I prefer to leave positive reviews on restaurants I adore, and simply ignore and let be those that I did not suit me well.

However, I could not pass up the chance to recount the experience I had at La casita del Mago.

To start off the restaurant was empty, the owner dismissed his lack of customers to the "off season" in Huaraz. It quickly became evident that that was not the case.

To put it shortly, the meals were overpriced, and the food was lower quality than that of the worst food cart on the side of the road. The entrees, were frozen pieces of fish on the same cuts of stale cold toast, and the chef was very colorful in his descriptions of the choices of main courses available, only to have microwaved paella being the only choice available.

All of this subpar food was available for the price of 85 sols. For reference, you can find incredibly high quality food prepared in professional kitchens in the capital of peru for less than 50! Meanwhile, all of this food was prepared in a dirty kitchen. Which was visible to the general public and had the appearance of a kitchen that was abused by an immature bachelor.

During my experience, due to the long day I had, and the lack of food I had eaten, I was able to overlook all of these sins to the culinary world. I could not, however, overlook the owners racism. The owner was very vocal in his disdain towards native peruvians, as he refused to serve a group of peruvians who came in because they wished to pay with card. This is understandable. What is not excusable however, is the racist rant slandering peruvians that followed.

The owner called all peruvians drunks, disrespectful, cheap and continued to recount how he preferred to serve tourists to the natives of the land due to peruvians having no redeemable characeristics. He will tell you his wife is peruvian, but this does not excuse the racist and disrespectful language he used towards the natives. I believe he was unaware I am fluent in spanish, and that I understood the disagreement he had with the group he refused to serve. Who had done no wrong, other than wishing to pay by card.

I do not wish to leave this review on a negative note, but there are very few positives to be said about La Casita del Mago. The singing was mediocre at best. I do respect the owners ability to hustle and swindle tourists. He is very careful about his word usage, and careful about controlling the atmosphere of his restaurant. He has the charm of a manipulative, narcissistic sociopath, and I respect the perfection of his craft to hustling, and stealing money out of tourists pockets.

With that being said, Do not visit La Casita del Mago, there are so many other great restaurants in Huaraz that are not an absolute waste of time and money.

Please visit literally any of them but this...

I’ve never been so mislead by online reviews. Hopefully this review spares you from falling into this trap too!

This was one of the most bizarre dining experiences of our lives, and even more bizarre is seeing people rave about it in their reviews. When we saw the neon lights outside we were hesitant, and we should have trusted our gut. The entire experience was extremely tacky—from the pictures of the owner all over the wall, to the many mentions of online reviews, to the keychain souvenirs touting said reviews, to the strange and intimate singing.

The food aspect (what we came for) felt like a total scam. Despite his long descriptions of how fresh the ingredients are, the food tasted the opposite of fresh—stale bread, old shrimp, and we even heard him using the microwave several times to reheat our food, which makes sense given how quickly everything came out. Even in the most casual restaurants microwaving food is unheard of. To top it all off, the food is incredibly overpriced. We paid the significantly less in Lima for a high-quality fine-dining experience, and otherwise this was more than double the price of every dinner we had in Peru, all serving fresh (not re-heated….) food. The next night we went to a Michelin star-level restaurant that luckily made up for this meal and was even less the price. The owner will respond saying that we were smiling and enjoying the meal but when you are the only two diners in there and he’s standing over you the whole time it’s too awkward to give anything but praise. The owner is undoubtedly warm and kind and clearly this type of experience might be for some, but for us it felt like a missed opportunity for our last...

The food was overpriced. I thought 75 sol was reasonable for 2, but per person?? One of the starters was just some cheese on stale hard bread — not even any butter. Our bill came to 200 sol.. for what I truly think should have been 80-90 sol at best. We didn’t even get the sangria, god knows how much that would have cost. The concept of reviews, and leaving a five star review, was mentioned about 4 or 5 times over the course of the meal, sometimes at length and unapologetically. if a place deserves 5 stars, it will get it. it should speak for itself, not have to beg. I get it, it’s a one man show, which I respect, and reviews help with business, but it has definitely disproportionately skewed the score of this place much higher than it should be, and thus it’s deceptive. he’s a lovely guy, and the service is attentive and nice, but there’s some serious self-centred energy in the place - photos of himself everywhere, on the walls, everything is “his /special creation” (including the aforementioned cheese on toast).. it’s pretty self-masturbatory. the singing was not up my alley, it was extremely loud. But I understand some people may really like that kind of thing so I won’t say any more on that. the prawn toast starter was great, as was the juice and the avocado ice cream. my partner also really liked the cupcake. regarding your replies to other negative comments saying “you said everything was ok”, I will say, it’s difficult to raise any issues in the atmosphere that’s created in this restaurant. there’s only 6 people max, and nothing is really “wrong”.. it’s just not a 5 star experience at all, and people should know...